


Rome Is Better Than Rome

by dasyatidae



Category: Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
Genre: 1970s, Blow Jobs, Broken noses and broken hearts, Canon-typical racism (brief), Coffee Rituals, Consent, Dirty Talk, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Time, Friendship, Grieving, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Second Chances, Summer Camp, Swimming Pools, boy next door, childhood crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:29:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae
Summary: Nath smells like whiskey and the lake when Jack pulls him up out of the water, onto the dock, and into his arms.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainingover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingover/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, rainingover! <3 
> 
> Thank you for requesting this fandom! I had a lovely time dreaming up a next chapter for Jack and Nath from Jack’s point of view, full of Hannah cuteness, resolved misunderstandings, and mended bones & hearts. Hope you enjoy!

Nath smells like whiskey and the lake. 

His dark hair is plastered to his forehead like his shirt is plastered to his goose-prickling skin. The water sheets off of him as Jack pulls him up onto the dock, practically into his arms, just for a moment. The little sister is sniffling next to them, and Jack’s breath catches when he lets go of Nath and leans back against his heels. He has to remind himself that Nath isn’t breathless, isn’t drowning—to push away the irrational stab of panic that shot through him when Nath went over the edge of the dock and disappeared beneath the surface of the water. Nath isn’t Lydia. In his haste to pull him up, Jack had forgotten the force of Nath’s fist slamming into his mouth; he gripped Nath’s hand hard, and now Nath is staring down at his raw knuckles, which are oozing fresh blood. 

The little sister—her name is Hannah, he remembers—is standing at Nath’s shoulder, shifting tentatively from foot to bare foot. Her wet, dark eyes flick between her brother and Jack, and her expression isn’t contrite; it’s watchful, like the push was just the beginning and she’s waiting for them to do something more. But Jack—Jack is waiting for Nath to shake off the water and the hush that’s fallen on the three of them, to grab Hannah’s hand and stalk from his sight with his answers that are not really answers at all. What Jack’s come to expect from these Lees are brief flashes of connection followed by flight. 

Before Nath hit him, Jack almost told him everything. Those moments are blurring together, they happened so fast. Jack knows he will spend hours lying in his bed or driving the empty roads on the edges of Middlewood playing back through those moments, sifting Nath’s words and expressions clear of the blood singing in Jack’s ears, the sand in his throat, and the wool in his head as Jack tried to tell him—as Jack almost told him—what? What would the words have been?  _I thought you knew. I thought Lydia told you that I’ve always been in love with you._  

Jack’s face hurts, his nose tingles, he’s cold. There’s an odd smear of blood across Nath’s ear and down his neck that Jack realizes is his own, from where Nath brushed against Jack as Jack hoisted him onto the dock. What did Jack say to him, really? What did Nath hear?

Nath shakes his head and climbs to his feet. His tennis shoes make a sloshing sound. Like Jack expected, he reaches out for Hannah’s hand. 

Get up, Jack tells himself. He’s wet now too, because of Nath, and his face hurts like hell. It’s hard to look up at the Lees; the sun glares from behind them, burnishing the water a blinding white. When Jack left his house, it had still been twilight. Soon Middlewood will wake up. His mother will come home from the hospital. Behind him, his dog Bird whines and thumps his tail on the wood of the dock. Thump, thump, thump. 

_Get up, go home, it’s over_ , he thinks. _You almost—but you didn’t, after all._

“Jack.” It’s Hannah’s small, tentative voice. It’s not like her sister’s voice at all. He’s barely heard her speak, he realizes, all these years of encountering the Lees by the lake, on the street, in town. One day by the lake—the day he caught and tasted the water drop that fell from Nath’s neck—he really noticed Hannah, recognized her as a fellow watcher, outsider. Hoped the hunger in her eyes wasn’t mirrored in his own. Wore his shades to preclude the possibility. 

“Your nose,” Hannah says. “It’s bleeding.” But she’s looking up at her brother, not at Jack. 

And then Nath holds out his other hand to Jack. Jack takes it quickly, before Nath can read some offense in his stunned expression and snatch back the offer. He lets Nath tug him to his feet. For a dazed moment, he and Hannah look at each other, and Jack thinks Nath is going to keep hold of them both, to walk them safely across the street like children. Then he lets go of Jack’s hand, of course.

“Come on,” Nath says.  
  
  
  
Jack has never actually been inside the Lee house. 

He should turn toward home at the street. He should turn away at the front door. But their steps are in synch, the three of them, and Bird trots along easily at Hannah’s side, her small hand brushing against the brindle fur of his back. It’s as if they expect Jack to follow them. So he does: he follows them into the house. The entry way is dark and quiet, except for the squelch of Nath’s wet sneakers as he toes them off. Jack mimics him, wondering, _what am I doing?_ He hesitates at the foot of the stairs as they begin to climb, Bird darting ahead of Nath, still glued to the little girl’s heels. 

He glances around, takes in the neat living room’s shadowy whites and beiges, its television and sofa. Where Nath would sit and watch news about space, wanting to be an astronaut, he remembers. 

Jack climbs the stairs, hesitating at the first landing. Hannah and Bird are nowhere to be seen.

“Over here.”

Nath is leaning against a doorway down the hall. 

Wary, Jack approaches him and pauses, resting a hand against the other side of the door frame. 

“Hannah took your dog upstairs to her room,” Nath says. “Here.” He pushes something soft into Jack’s hands. It’s a t-shirt, not thinned from wear like Jack’s, dove gray and folded neatly. 

Jack doesn’t know what to say. He turns the shirt over in his hands until it comes unfolded. Wants to say, _what about you?_ Nath is still in his wet clothes. Instead, he says, “You asked me for an explanation, and I didn’t give you one. Not really.”

Nath shrugs. He’s not looking at Jack. He’s looking at some spot on the wall over Jack’s shoulder, maybe. His head is titled back, resting on the lintel, and his hands are shoved in the pockets of his jeans severely, as if he’s trying to keep himself from fidgeting. Or shivering. His long, pale neck with that troubling smear of blood is bared to Jack, and oh, Jack wants to wipe the red away with his thumb, to follow the shadows on Nath’s neck down to where they pool at his collarbones. Jack is so rarely close to Nath outside of fantasies and occasional dreams that he’s actually not used to fighting down the impulse to touch him. He’s much better at schooling his features into impassivity when Nath walks by him on the other side of the street or the locker hall at school. Aside from that day at the lake all those months ago, the water drop day, it’s been years since he’s been this close to Nath. 

Nath exhales in a huff and finally looks at Jack—well, sort of. He’s staring at Jack’s face, at his nose, his mouth. Jack stares back at appraising brown eyes, long lashed. Small frowning crease between his brows. Thin lips parted in thought, very pink, the upper one a perfect bow. 

“Is it that bad?” 

Nath's frown deepens. He is so beautiful. 

And he has no idea. Nothing has changed, really. Except what Jack almost said, and the fact that he’s here—for the moment. It’s another opportunity to try again for Nath’s smile, before he says or does something inexplicably wrong and Nath tells him to fuck off again. Jack’s stomach twists with a stab of bitterness. He’s made it pretty clear what he thinks of Jack. 

“No—maybe—I’m not really sure if it’s bad,” Nath confesses, stepping closer. “You stopped bleeding.” 

“Well, that’s something. Do you think it’s broken? It feels broken.” Jack raises a hand toward his face, preemptively wincing. Nath surprises him again by grabbing his wrist. 

“Don’t. It'll hurt if you touch it.” He pulls Jack into the room—a bathroom. "We should clean up. Before my parents get up and see us like this.”

Jack lets Nath push him against the wall opposite the mirror. He has only a moment to look at his white, red, and swelling visage before Nath shatters his image by pulling open the cabinet behind the mirror to grab cotton balls and a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Jack yanks his ruined shirt over his head, taking care to pull the collar away from his face, and drops it on the floor. It’s not that weird to see a cascade of blood, already drying to red-brown, on the fabric. When he was little, he used to get nosebleeds at night sometimes, and his mother would hold him on her lap in the kitchen, never making a fuss about the way the bright, gushing red ruined both of their pajamas. Jack pulls on Nath’s shirt. It smells like cedar, and he can’t help but run his fingers over the fabric stretched across his chest for just a moment while Nath isn’t looking. 

“You should change,” Jack says carefully. “I’m okay.” 

Nath scoffs—or maybe he’s just clearing his throat—but stops rummaging in the cabinet and strips off his wet shirt, flings it at a hamper by the shower. Jack inhales sharply and instantly wants to curse at the stab of pain in his nose. Nath really must have no idea, despite what Jack’s wretchedly believed all these weeks. If he knew, he wouldn’t be standing shirtless in front of Jack, so close that Jack could reach out and touch him, run his hands down the line of his spine. He’s smaller than Jack, he always has been, and he’s lean and muscled; there’s a mole between his shoulder blades that Jack immediately yearns to kiss. He didn’t realize that Nath had already gathered dry clothes. Nath must have grabbed them while Jack lingered on the stairs, when he picked out the clean shirt for Jack. Jack had expected Nath to slip away to change in his room, of course. And now he’s—could he really be about to—Jack snaps his eyes shut when Nath undoes the zipper of his jeans, shuffles free of the heavy, wet denim. Fuck, how is this happening. His cock twinges, stiffens; he’s so achingly hard in an instant, and he doesn’t dare adjust himself. _Fuck._  

He can’t watch. He has to watch. His self control wins out, and he keeps his eyes scrunched shut until the other boy has stepped into dark pants and is fastening them at his slim waist. Nath grabs a towel and leans forward to rub it over his hair until it’s stringy and tousled. Then he slides on a fitted white undershirt and resumes his fumbling with the first aid supplies, as if it were all nothing. 

“I’m—I’m sorry I hit you. I’m sorry about your nose.” Nath’s back is to Jack again, but the words sound wrenched out, like it’s hurting him to make the apology. Jack’s chest throbs with the bitterness. 

“You don’t have to,” he says, meaning both the apology and the help. “My mom’s a doctor. I can just—she can take a look at me at home, you know.” 

“I don’t think she’d be very happy to see you looking like this."

Nath turns to face Jack. His mouth is tight, and his gaze darts around Jack’s face, over his wounds, not meeting his eyes. He’s soaked the cotton in the peroxide, and he seems intent on stepping right into Jack’s space, steadying his jaw with one hand while he swipes the cotton over Jack’s chin and dabs at Jack’s lower lip. 

“Ow, fuck,” Jack murmurs. His lip must be split.  

Nath tosses the bloody cotton and wets another piece. “This will probably be worse.” He brushes the material so lightly over Jack’s upper lip, around his nostrils, down the bridge of his nose. The pain is searing—damn, he should be icing everything before he turns purple—but he wouldn’t flinch, wouldn’t move away from Nath’s hands for anything. His erection is throbbing; the pain takes the edge off but does nothing to diminish his hardness, the feeling of need, of want. 

“There.” Nath steps back and wipes off his hurt knuckles with a fresh piece of cotton. But the ritual isn’t finished. Before Jack can breathe deeply to steady himself, Nath is looking up at him again, fingers bright, as if re-bloodied, with Mercurochrome that he brushes over Jack’s sensitive skin. 

“Okay, finished.” He does his knuckles and then leans back against the sink, regarding Jack’s feet with his usual concerned frown. Jack’s arousal slips away to a bearable level, and he feels a little glad, a little sad, a lot apprehensive. 

“I _am_ sorry,” Nath enunciates. "I just—I do want to know. I need to know. You and Lydia. Were you—did you—“ He exhales. A deep breath. Still won’t look at Jack. Jack feels miserable. God, how can Nath think that Jack and Lydia had dated or fucked. That all those months he had driven around with Lydia, hoping her warmth toward him might reach her brother by some kind of osmosis, Jack had wanted her. Had used her, maybe. Of course Nath thought these things. Why would he think anything else about Jack? All the rumors, all the girls he’d been with in the old Beetle. He was an idiot to think Nath wouldn’t hate him for spending time with Lydia. At first, it hadn’t really mattered, because Nath had already thought the worst of him. What had he told himself then? That he didn’t have anything to lose. 

The idea is ridiculous, and painful, now. 

“No, it wasn’t like that,” he insists, just as Nath continues with, “And if you were—going together, did you care about her? Did it affect what happened?” Nath shakes his head slowly. “I was so sure it was your fault somehow. Then, out there on the dock, the way you looked at me, I knew…”

Jack swallows. “What did you know?”

“That you wouldn’t have hurt her. But—but I don’t understand,” he finishes in a different tone, voice thick with frustration, darting an angry, searching glance up at Jack. 

“We were just friends. I wouldn’t have hurt her. But I think I did—disappoint her. I told her something about me that surprised her. And she got out of the car and walked away that afternoon. The last time I saw her.”

“What did you tell her?” 

Jack can’t meet his eyes. He can’t actually say it, after all. “That I would never hurt you,” he whispers.

“What?”

Nath's frowning, perplexed. There’s something in his gaze that’s part anger and part plea again—the look he had on the dock before he swung. Jack is staring back, trying to find words.

Nath says something softly, kind of muttering it to himself, and it sounds heart-wrenchingly like, “But you _have_ hurt me.”  

Then, all of a sudden, there's a knock on the bathroom door, and both of them start. “Nath?” 

Nath drops the peroxide, and there’s a thud as it hits the tiles. It’s a woman’s voice. His mother. 

Their stare down morphs from crackling, confused standoff to mutual concern and then embarrassment. Nath turns away from him. His tan face actually flushes red, and Jack can see him consider and then resign himself to what’s about to come. “Yeah?” he answers, voice mostly even, just a hint of surliness. 

“Who are you talking to?” 

“Jack Wolff is here, mom.” 

A beat. Nath sighs, and before his mother can ask the obvious question, _what are you doing shut in the bathroom with Jack Wolff at seven in the morning?_ , Nath flings open the door. 

Jack can only watch as her initial moue of confusion—the self-conscious sweep of her hands over bed-tousled blonde hair and the front tie of her dressing gown—drops into gaping, startled alarm. 

“Nath!” she gasps.

“It’s okay, mom. It’s just the Mercurochrome.” 

Her eyes dart from Jack’s reddened face to Nath, down to his damaged knuckles. “Were you fighting?” 

It’s like he should say something—in Nath’s defense, maybe. _Terribly sorry, Mrs. Lee; your son and I were working something out, but everything’s fine now._ He can’t really imagine saying that though, and he’s not sure Nath would appreciate his interference.  
   
  
  
Jack and Nath sit across from each other at the Lee’s kitchen table pretending they can’t overhear Mrs. Lee’s terse, low-voiced conversation with Jack’s mom. She’s taken the phone out of the kitchen into the hall and has shut the door as much as the stretched cord will allow, but Jack can still catch almost every word.

“—won’t tell me, but—like they were fighting—nose might be broken—don’t know what’s gotten into him—so sorry—best if you’d come—“

Nath has set his busted hand atop the table next to his unmarred one and is frowning down at them. He’s going to have quite the crease there, between his brows, when he gets older. 

Jack clears his throat.

“What?” Nath doesn't look up.

Mrs. Lee had very politely offered him coffee after marching them downstairs and ushering them into the kitchen. The coffee machine makes a little beep. 

“Do you mind if I?” 

Nath shakes his head. 

In the hallway, Mrs. Lee is saying, “—no—my husband—fine, really, don’t mean to alarm—so early, sorry, must’ve just gotten home—don’t know—Nath—ever since the funeral—“

Jack slides from his seat; it has been all he can do to sit still, anyway. He isn't naturally a still person; he likes to shift between gears, to fiddle with the radio dial or a cigarette, to tap rhythms on his desk, to run his hands over Bird’s fur when they sit by the lake after their morning walks or runs.

The mugs are in a glass-faced cupboard above the coffee maker. Just one shelf of them, maybe a dozen total. Jack opens the cupboard and lifts the front two carefully, peering at the rest. He is particular about coffee mugs. It’s a good luck morning ritual that he shares with his mother; she didn’t originate it—they fabricated it together somehow in the early years when they were still getting used to it being just the two of them, no husband or father. His mother would let him sit on the counter while she ground coffee and spooned it into the machine, and he could twist around and pick a mug that matched his mood—a mug to go with the kind of day he wanted, the kind of day he imagined he’d have. She’d select one with equal care. Jack always drank his orange juice out of a mug until he was fourteen and started drinking coffee. They have an assortment of mugs at their house in different colors and sizes, no two alike. Some are secondhand from markets or thrift stores; others have been collected on their occasional travels. Jack’s New England grandmother was a ceramicist, and a couple terra cotta tumblers of her making remain intact. The Lees only have plain white mugs. And there, in the back, one with a rose pattern and script that says World’s Best Mom. Jack knows without asking not to pull that one from the shelf.

He pours two cups of coffee from the carafe and carries them to the table, sets one in front of Nath.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Nath says.

“Why not?” Jack sits down and cradles his mug between his hands, enjoying both the warmth and the new, non-Nath focus for his attention. 

“I don’t know. I guess I just haven’t picked up the habit.” Nath picks up the mug instead, as if to accentuate his words or to appraise the mug’s contents; he cups it in his hands like Jack and lifts it under his chin for just a moment. To feel its warmth, maybe. Jack’s breath catches. 

“Worried you’d stunt your growth?” he manages, with a smile, but Nath’s gaze jerks up sharply, and Jack feels like punching himself in the face, adding to the damage. “I mean, I always was, but I like the taste—and the caffeine—so I drink it anyway.” God, why does he always say the stupidest things to Nath; it’s the universe’s horrid joke that the girls at school think Jack’s so charming. 

Nath studies him for a moment which feels like an aching forever to Jack. Unexpectedly, he sighs and takes a small sip from the mug. “I’m probably done growing anyway.” His tone is morose, but then the corner of his mouth flicks up in a smile. He licks his lips. “Could use some sugar.”

Jack hides his relief and also, he hopes, the big messy tangle of warm feelings that surged through him when Nath ran his tongue over his lips, by taking a big gulp of coffee. “You should come drink coffee at my place sometime,” he says impulsively.

“Why?” 

“We have better mugs. I mean, different coffee mugs. Like different colors, you know?”

Nath is staring at him like he’s lost it. “Alright,” he says. And then, in a murmur, almost talking to himself, “I’m leaving for Opening Days next week.” 

As if Jack hasn’t been counting down the days. He’s an idiot. Best thing that can happen is for Nath to leave, for Jack to never see him again.

“Doctor Wolff will be here in a moment, boys,” says Mrs. Lee, stepping back into the kitchen to replace the telephone. She doesn’t seem to notice that Nath is drinking his very first cup of coffee. 

“Are you going to wake up dad?” Nath asks.

Mrs. Lee plucks at her dressing gown tie. “I’m sure he’ll be up soon.” 

Nath nods. Silence descends heavily on the room.  
   
  
  
They get in trouble.

Jack’s not sure if the parental anger is more or less severe because neither he nor Nath attempts to explain their fight, their wounds, their feelings, beyond a few words and shrugs. The worst is when Nath’s father comes downstairs. Jack can see Nath stiffen in his chair. 

But Mr. Lee puts his hand on his son’s shoulder briefly as he sits next to his wife. The way he leans toward her is subtle—a plant’s minute reaching toward sun—but she takes his hand at once. Nath’s father lets his wife and Jack’s mom do most of the talking, but soon their inquiries lose steam. Perhaps in the face of Mr. Lee's mildness and the warmth of his gaze on his wife’s hand in his own the women can’t keep up their sternness. 

Jack is good at noticing these things, and it’s a trait somewhat inherited from his mother. She declares that it’s time to go, thanking the Lees for their hospitality. Wishing it could be under better circumstances and all that, et cetera, et cetera. 

“I’m disappointed,” she says to Jack and Nath, and Nath’s parents chime in their agreement. 

She looks at Nath’s hand briefly and declares nothing broken there. Jack’s nose is another matter. 

“We better get home, get ice on you before you swell more.”

Jack looks at Nath, whose dark eyes cringe at him guiltily. Strangely, it hasn’t occurred to Jack till now how funny and unattractive he must be, his busted face smeared with the cherry red disinfectant. 

“Wait,” Nath says. “Your dog. I’ll get him for you.”

Nath slips upstairs while the rest of them stand awkwardly in the entrance way. Soon Nath returns with Bird. Jack feels like there’s a good chance that the Lee house is the kind of house where animals aren’t usually allowed, and he isn’t going to search out the restrained disapproval in Nath’s parents’ eyes. 

Nath touches his arm lightly as he turns to go. “Hannah’s sleeping,” he says softly, so close to Jack’s ear. Like this is the coda of their morning’s secret adventure, the sign that all is well. 

Back home, his mom wraps an ice pack in a dish towel and settles him on the couch.

“So, does he know?” she asks, examining Jack’s nostrils for obstruction, and Jack knows the full question is, _Does he know, and did he do this to you because of it?_

“No,” he says. “I don’t think so. I thought Lydia told him, but she didn’t.” 

Jack’s mother hums, nods, lets go of Jack’s face. She doesn’t look sorry for him, and she doesn’t ask any more questions about it. 

“I love you, mom. You know that, right?”

“Of course I do.” She brushes his hair from his forehead, tugs lightly on one of his longest curls, one that’s always falling into his face. “She was an interesting person, wasn’t she? A good friend to you?” 

“Yeah, she was.”

His mom squeezes his shoulder. Jack thinks about Mr. Lee putting his hand on Nath’s shoulder.

Jack expects his mother to go to bed. She probably hasn’t slept since getting home from the hospital; it’s hard to tell because she always wears the same dark slacks and button up blouses, under her white coat in the ER and when she’s just around the house reading. But she stays with Jack. She cooks them both scrambled eggs and then takes a nap on the couch opposite his while he watches cartoons on the television. 

When he’s sure she’s asleep, Jack lifts the collar of Nath’s shirt to his busted nose. But of course there’s no Nath smell—no whiskey, no lake water, no sweat—just the sweet cedar scent that Jack realizes is from the same laundry detergent that he uses on his own clothes, here, at home. 

 

✭

 

Mummified in his comforter, pillow over his head, Jack is half dreaming and half daydreaming. He lets himself sink into the over-saturated, hyper-focused memories of early childhood. He’s thinking about water. Not the murky, living water that swallowed Lydia and baptized Nath off the edge of the dock. The turquoise, chemical-clear water of the outdoor community pool or the basement pool at the Y, its white tile sides and cement bottom dappled with dancing light. Hesitation, venturing into the deep section, frigid cement under his knees as he practiced diving from the edge during swim lessons. Swimming down, down, down, into another world, pressure in his ears, all the way to the bottom to snatch the weighted bright pink and green rings again and again. The other kids admired his daredevil grin, his bravery. _Watch this, bet you can’t, bet I can!_ But they squinted at him strangely or shied away when they realized he was the kid with just a mom, a working mom never home. He remembers playing tag, counting out precious dimes to buy the great white shark limeade popsicles from the snack counter. That chlorine feeling deep in his nose, Marco Polo, the delight of _yes_ , of _we are in this together,_ when Nath’s hands reached out and grasped him. _Got you, you’re It._

Jack doesn’t expect to hear anything more from the Lees, not really.

He’s not moping around the house either. He’s really not. 

If he wants to stay up till all hours driving around with Bird, smoking cigarettes at the drive in, bringing his mom fresh, decent coffee and warm meals in the middle of her night shift, watching _The Twilight Zone_ , well, hey, it’s summer. His last summer at home. If he wants to sleep in until noon and run around the lake, to read comic books and do fuck all, why not? It’s fine. What else has he got to do to fill his time? He hasn’t felt like writing lately. Which is _fine_. He’ll be up to his ears in writing assignments soon enough.  

In the spring before school let out and the early summer before camp, Jack filled up his time doing custodial work at the hospital. And he washed dishes and took the occasional barbacking shift at the truck stop restaurant out on the highway. He thought about taking shifts again after he got back from the three weeks of summer camp (also his last), but the pull of languor, quiet, and finality was too much. _His last summer at home._

He’s spent his whole life with this ticker tape countdown in the back of his head keeping track of the years, months, and days till he leaves Middlewood. He does not have an angry, lashing hate for the place; it’s more of a resigned dislike, what he imagines suburban fags all over the country feel. A weird feedback loop, perhaps: did he never fit in because he always knew he was going to get the fuck out? Or has he been driven to get the fuck out because he never fit in? He should despise Middlewood. There have been moments when he’s felt like he’s being smothered, like he’s buried alive—like he might die suddenly, be snuffed out like Lydia, and his whole life will have been this nothing, this almost, just treading water, just waiting. But he loves his mother, and he likes being alone when he’s not getting off with or getting inside the heads of the girls at school—the other weirdos or occasionally the ones who fit in, who look at him like he’s dangerous and lap up his otherness with their kisses and their hands hungry to wriggle into his jeans. He likes that he’s had so much time to audit classes at the college, to read and write poems and letters to his friends from camp. 

His camp is a Vermont art camp where he spends three weeks every June reading Nabokov, writing poetry in meadows, and leaping into freezing roadside watering holes with boys who sneak out at night to kiss him in the woods, to suck him off in the music composition rooms and the barn loft, of all places. Talented, wiry, dark haired white and Jewish boys from New York or Boston who are never Nath, never Nath. _You live where?_ they always say, and they’re sincerely sorry for him, the fucking snobs, until he makes them cry laughing with his clever, acerbic stories about Middlewood, its school dances and empty spaces and smallness. Sure, he’s jealous of them—their money and their social capitol, their hip clothes and tales of sneaking into shows at their favorite haunts, their fucking trips to Europe—but he also carefully crafts a large space in himself to be sorry for _them_. He has to; it’s the only way to get on, to get through, without hating himself. Born into their world, they haven’t had to fight for it. They don’t fully appreciate what they have, and they haven’t had the lonely years, the endless empty hours to fill with reading, writing, and studying. They’re not as good as Jack is, even though they think they’re better. He takes their kisses, their warm, posh mouths on his cock, and he knows, in his heart of hearts, that he’ll be published before them. 

Before Lydia traipsed into his car and into his life, Jack had pretty much given up on the idea that Nath would be anything more to him than a regret, a playground love, a teenage crush, and the mark by which he’d judge beauty in all the young men to move through his arms and his bed at Bennington, in New York or San Francisco.  

Nath has never liked him. Okay, maybe he liked Jack for a few moments once, plucking some candy from Jack’s palm. But the other ninety percent of their lives, Nath has loathed Jack. And he should be easy for Jack to loath right back.  
   
  
  
Last summer, Jack got high and stupid maudlin with his camp friends on the last night and waxed poetic about his unrequited love for Nath. The five of them were in a weedy meadow a ways down the road, far enough away from patrolling counselors that they dared to kick up a fire. The fire was small enough that they could douse it quickly with their cheap beer if necessary, small enough to draw them close, knee to knee. 

He remembers the way his friends grinned at him after he stumbled and mentioned Nath, how they plied him with more alcohol and sly questions until they’d drug the whole sad story out of him. The worst of the experience went something like this, as far as he can remember:

“Fuck, man, that’s dark,” said Jess. “So he has no idea, you’ve never—?"

“I think it’s romantic!” Abbey argued. 

“It’s not romantic,” Michael said. “Tell me, how can you have real feelings for someone you’ve barely ever interacted with? You’re just making a bunch of shit up about this guy.”

“They go to school together. He has to know something! Your school only has, like, fifty people in it, right Jack?” Abbey giggled.

 “No, no—he’s fucking projecting. He has—that thing—what do you call it?”

“Yellow fever!”

“He has some kink for oriental boys. A chink kink.” Michael laughed. 

“Michael! You can’t say that! That’s so bad!” But they had all laughed; he remembers being hit by that wave of snorting and giggling, being hit by how together they all were in it.

“No, no, it totally makes sense,” Michael crowed. "I bet that’s why you fucked that squinty eyed Southern kid last year.”  

After that, Jack threw his beer can at Michael’s face and stalked back to his dorm by himself. He hadn’t been as sorry to leave the next day as he’d been previous years. 

This summer, Jack had been in a different dorm. Nobody had talked to Jack about Nath or about that night around the fire, and Jack had spent his free time with the new kids in his writing workshops. Fuck those music composition kids. 

 

Jack may not have spoken with Nath often over the years, but these are the things he _knows_ about Nath, the things that make it so hard for Jack to stop loving him:

  * Nath loves space. When he was little, he wanted to be an astronaut. (Jack would totally have played astronauts with him.)
  * The way Nath looks when he finishes a race, when his sleek selkie head pops up at the edge of the pool and he pulls his goggles up. Before he looks at his competitors or to see the times, there’s this moment when he’s just looking at the water and at the audience, and he’s grinning—the only time Jack has seen him look really, really happy, at peace with the world.
  * Nath chews on his lower lip when he’s focusing in class. One time Jack saw him chew on his pencil eraser, and eraser bits broke off in his mouth. He turned bright red and actually swallowed the eraser bits, he was so embarrassed. 
  * Nath always, always helps his table mates when they’re stuck on their work, and during labs, he takes on the lion’s share of the work without complaint.
  * Nath loves his sisters. His love is steady, quiet, and daily, and it’s fierce, loud, and protective. And oh, Jack can only daydream of what it would feel like to be wrapped in a love like that.
  * How they are so alike—both loners at school, both readers, both from families that are different, that stick out in Middlewood. Nath is the smartest person Jack knows. When he answers questions in class, when he recites speeches in rhetoric class, when Jack reads his papers during peer editing swaps, Jack wants more than anything to be in conversation with him, to learn all his opinions and what he thinks about everything.
  * When Nath speaks in front of the class, his ears turn red, and he gets a flush on his neck. 
  * Nath reads science fiction novels, and he’s not embarrassed about it; Jack’s seen him leave the paperbacks out on his desk sometimes for anyone to see.
  * When they did popcorn reading in second grade, Nath could read ahead and finish the whole passage, draw pictures in his notebook, _and_ follow along with the class, all at the same time. Jack got in trouble for losing his place every time he was called (he could only accomplish the first two of those tasks at once, the reading and the drawing) until Nath started reaching over and putting his finger next to the correct line whenever Jack’s name was called. 
  * Nath always believed in Lydia. Even though Jack could tell all spring that Lydia was mad at Nath, even though it twisted Jack’s stomach in strange ways to think that Lydia was running away from Nath to spend time with _him_ , this truth shone through her myriad stories about her brother. Nath was her ally, her partner, her champion. And God, of course Jack was so jealous. But it was also beautiful, the way they were in life together, the way they supported each other. 



These are just some of the things that Jack loves about Nath.

 

Okay, add these things to the list: the unhesitating way Nath took his hand and let Jack pull him out of the water; the way he took Jack into his home and trusted him enough to strip before him; how he gave Jack warm clothes and patched up his wounds; how he looked when he drank his very first cup of coffee. Nath could have told his parents about Jack and Lydia, all his horrible suspicions. But he didn’t tell.

Maybe they’re even now. Jack’s months with Lydia, that closeness, seeing something inside her that he thinks, painfully, even Nath missed somehow. Nath’s suspicions and blows. His unexpected help and tending. Maybe these things balance out. 

Nath is leaving for Harvard—Harvard!—in mere days. And after that, Jack will go to Vermont.  
  
  
  
There’s the tick-tack-tick-tack clatter of Bird’s nails over their uneven, old wood floors, and then Bird jumps up on the bed and snuffles the blankets until he finds Jack’s chin and covers his stubble with slobber. 

Enough sleep, enough bed rumination, for today then. Jack wrestles Bird for a moment and then chases him off the bed, sits up and pulls on his hoodie. In the bathroom mirror, his face is pretty much the same. The swelling is gone but his two black eyes are an impressive purple. Well, they might be a little better today; the purple is starting to mottle yellow and green around the bruises’ edges. 

“Jack!” His mother’s voice drifts from the kitchen. So he’s slept late enough again that she’s not only home from work but is awake and up around the house.

“I’m up!” he shouts back.

“You have a visitor!”  
  
  
  
It’s Hannah Lee.

She’s sitting at the kitchen table in his usual spot across from his mother. Her hair is pulled back in a pony tail, and she’s kicking her sandaled heels against the chair legs lightly. Bird’s licking hello elicits a delighted warble from her. 

“I wish I had a dog,” she tells Jack’s mom as she lifts up Bird’s floppy ears and runs her fingers over their silky tips. She has a cup in front of her and appears to be eating cookies straight from the package with Jack’s mom, the intimidating Dr. Wolff. 

“Look who decided to join the living,” his mom observes, raising an eyebrow at his hoodie and flannel pants. He’d been so surprised to hear they had company that he had, ironically, stumbled into the kitchen without changing out of his pajamas. “I can’t believe you can wear all that in the middle of summer.”

“I like to be warm when I sleep,” he replies automatically; this conversation always proceeds in its well-worn groove. Next his mother will shake her head over the fact that he never seems to care about being warm in the winter, when it’s actually cold, when he goes out in the snow with just a sweatshirt. She doesn’t seem phased by her inadvertent mention of death in front of Hannah, and he tries to pass over it lightly as well. 

“Hello Miss Lee. Are you here to visit Bird?” Jack sits down next to his mother and picks up a cookie. Miss Lee—how he addressed Lydia, all those months ago in their Physics class. It just slipped out. 

He’s glad when she wrinkles her nose and says, “Hannah. Miss Lee makes me sound—old. It makes you sound old too when you say it!”

“Well, alright.”

“I’m here to visit you,” she says seriously. She’s staring at him—at his black eyes probably. He knows they look pretty gruesome. A kid shouldn’t have to see that sort of thing. 

“Hannah was telling me about the kind of dog she wants when she’s older,” his mother says.

“When I have my own house,” Hannah corrects. “I want a golden retriever. They’re good swimmers.” 

“Mm. I think Bird has some golden in him,” says Jack.

"Along with several other breeds,” his mom adds. “He’s pure mutt."

“Are you going to take him for a walk?”

“Yeah.” Jack looks out the kitchen window. The day is bright. It’s getting on one in the afternoon. “How is it out there?”

“Hot. But not that bad.”

“Hmm.”

“Can I walk Bird with you?”

He looks at his mother. She’s folding the newspaper down to the crossword panel. 

“Does your brother know you’re here?” He can’t help asking; he knows it sounds funny. The correct question would be, _do your parents know?_

Hannah just continues to watch him with her level gaze. “He said I could come over if I wanted, that he didn’t mind.”

“Oh?” Jack says faintly.

His mother thwaps him with her newspaper. “Go put some real pants on. I’ll make you coffee and toast.”  
  
  
  
Jack and Hannah walk Bird along the lake, through the far part of their subdivision, and then down the road into a large woodsy park with scattered copses of trees. It is a hot, bright late summer day, verging on muggy, and the little girl looks longingly at the water when they pass the dock. 

They don’t talk much, but it doesn’t feel too awkward, and Jack is glad for the silence. Hannah has impressed him equally with her quiet poise and her willingness to stand up to her brother, to defend him to Nath. But he has this strange fear that conversation between them will echo his car talks with Lydia—like they couldn’t avoid talking about her family woes and about Nath, of course. It’s probably doing Hannah a disservice to think that; she strikes him as very much her own person. But still, he can’t shake the discomfort. Probably it’s also just strange to be spending time with a kid. Jack has never babysat, and he’s the youngest cousin in his extended family.

“Would you take me to the pool?” Hannah asks suddenly when they've looped back around and returned to their shared street. 

“What, now?”

She perks up and grins at him. “Would you? I could go now!” When he hesitates, she adds, “Or not now—how about tomorrow?”

“Why doesn’t your brother take you?” _Or your mother. Your father._  

“I don’t know,” she evades. “He's busy.” 

_Doing what?_ Jack wonders. “What about your mom and dad?”

“They’re always busy."

“How do you know?”

She shrugs.

“You should ask them,” he says.

“I don’t know if they’d want to go now. I don’t think they’ve wanted to go swimming. Because of Lydia, you know.”

“Yeah.” They’re approaching the Lee house. “Your brother loves swimming,” Jack says.

“You could come inside. We could ask my mom if you could take me.” Hannah darts bright, hopeful glances at him. 

“Um.” That would be so weird. How can he explain it to her? His startling bruised face, the fact that their families are not friends, the fact that Nath fucking hates him, the fact that he was in the Lee kitchen getting scolded for his immature behavior several days ago. “I don’t think your mom would like that.”

Hannah makes a small noise of protest, but Jack forges on. “I don’t think she’d like you spending time with me. Because Nath and I were fighting.” And that’s just one reason, just the first out of his mouth.

Hannah frowns. Her frown is a lot like her brother’s. It makes it a lot harder to say no to her, so Jack looks away, up at the impenetrable Lee house with its neat lawn and drawn shades. An unremarkable house. If it wasn’t seared in his brain as a lodestar, it would be indistinguishable from its neighbors, from almost every other house on the street. 

“She would say it’s okay,” Hannah insists, voice smaller. “Nath would say it’s okay. It would prove you aren’t fighting anymore!” 

Jack remembers what it feels like—the bite of disappointment he’d felt as a child when older people he’d thought of as not-quite-adults, as allies, had suddenly become recalcitrant, unreasonable, extremely adult and far away. The bite of betrayal; you’d thought they were on your team, but they were shamming all along.

“Nath and I are always fighting,” he says.

“But you don’t want to be fighting with him.”

Jack tries to smile at her. “True. Oh, I know it.”

“Then you should try to not be fighting with him.” She’s still frowning, and she’s starting to sound upset. Just a little like she did when she’d hit Nath with her fists.

“Hey, I’m sorry, okay?” Jack backs away from her, keeps smiling. “You should go drink some water, get out of the sun. Thanks for coming over.”

He whistles for Bird and walks to his house with the feeling of her eyes on his back the whole way. 

It occurs to him that beyond defending him, the kid is trying to set him and Nath up—well, you know, in some sense of the term. She’s trying to get them together by pushing at an animosity that she doesn’t understand. It should be sweet, but her charity is hitting him as depressing instead. He flops facedown on the couch, sweaty and gross and not giving a damn, and attempts to will his mind into a state of lassitude, if not utter blankness.

 

✭

 

He stays up till 3:00 AM, but his mom shakes him awake at nine, a manic glint in her eyes. 

“Get up!” She pulls the pillow off of his head. “Get up and make me breakfast.”

It’s been one of those heroic nights at the hospital. She tells him about it while he fries thin-sliced potatoes, bacon, and eggs. 

“It needs a sweet,” his mom says, breaking off mid-rant to peer around his shoulder at the stove. “To be a full a breakfast. Make some pancakes too, chef.”

Jack makes really good pancakes. It’s one of his secret powers.

While he mixes the batter, Dr. Wolff makes more coffee. She likes to storm up and down the kitchen in these moods, gesturing with her coffee cup. 

“You’re not going to be able to sleep if you keep drinking like that,” Jack warns.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” 

She’d already picked out her mug by the time he staggered to the kitchen. It is the forest green mug that features a cluster of owls, perching on a branch in the center of a white oval.

“Well, at any rate,” says Jack, “Save some of that batch for me.”

“I’m picking your mug today. Your choices this week have been…unimaginative.” She marches to the cupboard and flings it open. 

Jack snorts. “Do your worst.” He uses the large wooden spoon to dab Mickey Mouse ears onto the pancake he’s just poured into the pan. The batter settles into misshapen circles—a rudimentary mouse, a little kid’s crayon drawing. “What do you think the coffee cups will be like at Bennington?” he wonders.

“That hole in the woods? Are you sure they even have coffee?”

Jack attempts, and fails, to step on her foot. She’s sprightly, his old mum. 

“You’ll probably be drinking it out of little plastic cups.”

“Jesus, mom,” he groans. “That’s terrible. You can’t joke about that.”

“Hmph.” Which sounds like, _says who?_

Jack uses the eggs and bacon to give the Mickey Mouse pancake a terrifying face. He shoos his mom to the table and sets the plate in front of her with a flourish.“There, are you happy now?” 

“Not bad, chef. Fetch the accouterment.”

Soon they’re both settled with topped off coffee, syrup, hot sauce, marmalade, and an explosion or two of powdered sugar.  

The coffee cup his mom has chosen for him is the moon landing mug. It has an angular handle and a blue-hued illustration of astronauts standing on the lunar surface, Earth looming in the background amidst twinkling stars. Kind of a special occasion mug for Jack, usually. But there’s no way he’s going to comment on her choice. He drinks his coffee and attacks his pancake face while listening to detailed explanations of difficult emergency medical procedures like a good son.

At quarter of eleven, there’s a whumping knock on the edge of the screen door. 

“That’ll be your cue,” his mom says cheerfully, spearing the last potato on his plate. Bird barks a greeting.

“What have you done?” Jack says. And, suspicion creeping in, “You’re a terrible parent, you know that?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Shoo."

Mrs. Lee and Hannah are standing at the door, squinting into the comparative darkness of Jack’s home. Hannah waves, face neutral, when he approaches and is forced to invite them into the kitchen. He does so with extra charm calculated to disarm Mrs. Lee and distract her from his lingering black eyes. Hannah is clutching an orange swimsuit and a beach towel to her chest, he can’t help but notice. 

Mrs. Lee declines coffee and stands fitfully in the kitchen doorway despite Jack’s invitation to sit. She looks everywhere but at Jack’s face. A charm failure, perhaps. Oh well.

“Are you sure it isn’t any trouble to take her for the afternoon?” Mrs. Lee asks Dr. Wolff.

“Oh no, not at all. You brought your swimming gear!” she enthuses to Hannah. “Good.” 

Mrs. Lee smiles down at her daughter with a vague air of confusion, like she’s recently gained the ability to see the girl. “I should go,” she says. “I’ll have to take you up on your hospitality another time. Be good,” she tells Hannah. “I”ll see you tomorrow evening.”

Jack looks at his mother in alarm, and Mrs. Lee laughs. “Nathan and Hannah are staying home together while my husband and I are away for the weekend. Hannah, Nath will pick you up around four.

“Thank you, Jack,” she says to his feet. 

After she’s gone, Jack turns away from Hannah to start on the dishes. 

“Don’t even think about it, young man,” his mother says. “Quit dilly-dallying. It’s pool time.”

“Are you coming too then?”

“Regretfully, no. Things to do here,” she says cheerfully. And to Hannah, “Do you know Jack made me Mickey Mouse pancakes this morning? He’s very good at making pancakes.”

Hannah looks impressed.  
  
  
  
“So that was sneaky of you,” Jack remarks, once they’re in the car on the way to the community pool; it’s too beautiful a day to think of going to the concrete bunker that is the pool at the Y. He glances over at Hannah. Her swim gear is a neon pile in her lap, and she’s looking out the window. 

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding the least apologetic. “You were being weird. And I really needed a babysitter. My parents won’t let me stay home alone.” 

“How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“Makes sense then.” 

“I hardly ever get to sit in the front seat. So thanks.”

“For letting you sit in the front seat?”

“Yeah.”

Jack snorts. “You are welcome.” And then, because he’s a masochist, “Where’s your brother?” He honestly doesn’t care where Hannah’s parents have disappeared, but it’s been echoing in his head for the last half hour, _Nath will pick you up around four._

“Shopping for college things. It’s going to be weird when he’s gone.”

“Yeah. I bet.”

He pulls into the pool parking lot. It’s crowded, but a station wagon pulling out at the back of the lot leaves ample space for the Beetle. “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“Well, that explains it. Got the sandwiches?” 

“Yeah.” She picks up the red cooler that his mother had packed from the floor by her feet.

“If they’re inedible, I’ll get us something from the snack stand.”

“Oh!” Hannah looks pleased. “Do you think they will be?”

“Hard to say. My mother’s cooking is really hit or miss after one of her all night shifts at the hospital. Come on.” He takes the cooler from her and they walk across the parking lot toward the pool entrance.

“Sandwiches aren’t cooking,” Hannah says thoughtfully. “My mother doesn’t like to cook, but she makes sandwiches all the time.”

So Lydia had told him. Before that, Jack had assumed that Mrs. Lee was more of a Betty Crocker type—a holdover of his childhood belief that the world of mothers was divided into every other mom and his mom.

“Is your mom really a doctor?”

“Yeah, she really is.” 

Jack stopped going to both the Y and the community pool years ago when it became too much of a hassle for his mother to maneuver him to swim lessons. Why bother, was her thought, when they lived right next to a perfectly swimmable lake? Jack went only a few times in high school with other kids, mostly girls. One time he and Karen climbed the wall after hours and got drunk. Karen almost puked in the pool. That had been gross. In the dark, the shuttered concession stand and changing rooms, the stacked lounge chairs and membrane-like pool cover, had all been eerie and a little sad (though the whiskey had gone a fair ways to dispelling such moony feelings). 

Today, the pool is so crowded with people; there’s not one empty square foot of shabbiness over which Jack can mourn the passage of years or his misspent youth or et cetera. All the blue and red umbrellas are out, and canvas bags, discarded clothes, and flip-flops spill across lounge chairs, so many bright spots of color. Kids whoop and splash and cannonball amidst flying inflatable toys and yells of “no running!” Babysitters, moms, and even dads slip in and out of the water, stretch out with paperbacks, or chat over iced tea and sweating cans of pop. Old ladies in swimming caps preside over the quiet pool, finished with their aerobics, perhaps, but not ready to withdraw. There are other teens too, some people he recognizes from school—one glittery social group huddled up together giggling and slicking each other with Butter Up. 

“Well, Hannah Banana, here we are. What’s your usual pool procedure?”

She’s standing rather close by his side, like she feels the wallop of all the noise and people too. But she’s grinning up at him. Happy. “Do you think we can find an umbrella?”

“Absolutely. We’ll take over one if we have to. You can distract ‘em, and I’ll free one up by throwing some poor family’s stuff into the water.” 

She giggles. He sends her off to the changing rooms and sweet talks the attendant into pulling out a couple chairs and another umbrella from the back room and setting them up in the slightly less hectic corner by the deep end. The guy’s name is Christopher, and he’s in Jack's year, plays basketball; he came into Rodeo’s a few times during Jack’s shifts, and Jack’s pretty sure he was cruising—in the lot there and maybe at the rest stop a mile down the highway too. Jack would have gone with him if he were braver. If he felt more stuck in his life. If he went for blondes, maybe. Anyway, Chris is good-naturedly susceptible to Jack’s dimples and lowest-pitched voice. Just rolls his eyes a bit, laughs, asks Jack if he got in a fight or something, then gives in and helps Jack out. 

“I haven’t seen you at Rodeo’s recently,” he says as he finishes setting up the umbrella. It’s a blue one. 

“Quit a few months ago. I didn’t know you worked here.”

Chris shrugs. “Summer gig. I do lifeguard shifts too. Getting out of here soon though.”

“Congrats, man. Where you going?”

“Berkeley.” He grins. 

“Nice.” It’s easy, second nature, to smile and deflect inquiries about himself. 

“Hello,” Chris says, and Jack is surprised to find Hannah returned, sidled up to his side in her orange suit. 

“See, little lady,” Jack says. "Our own umbrella, by hook or by crook. Chris, this is my friend Hannah Banana. We’re neighbors.”

Hannah stares at Chris appraisingly, mouth pursed. “Nice to meet you.”

“I should get back to work,” Chris says. “Give me a call if you want to hit up Rodeo’s sometime before you leave. It could be fun. Pleasure instead of business, you know.” 

“Right. Sure.” Jack clasps his hand, feels Chris’s fingers linger a moment at his shoulder as he turns away. “Thanks for the umbrella.”

“Are you friends with him?” Hannah asks, spreading her towel out over her chair. 

Jack raises his eyebrows at her tone. “Didn’t think much of him, did you?” She gives him a look, and he puts his hands up in exaggerated contrition. "No, we’re not friends.” He sits down and pulls off his sneakers. He hadn’t bothered to put on socks, and the tops of his toes are red from rubbing against the rough canvas. “He used to come into the restaurant where I worked, is all. I don’t really have many friends here,” he confesses.

“I sort of have friends, but we’ve never been to each other’s houses, so I’m not sure it counts.”

“Huh. Is that what friendship’s about? I take it back. I have no friends.” 

"Well, we're friends now, you and me.”

“Okay, fair enough.” Leaning back in the lounge chair to survey the pool mayhem, Jack squirms against the funny yet familiar feeling of the plastic chair slats pressing into his skin. Next to him, Hannah has begun what looks like a painstaking process of applying sunblock. 

“My mom already did my shoulders and back twice,” she says darkly. “I burn easily.”

She is paler than Nath. Nath gets so tan in the summers.

“Your friends at school—are they nice? Do you like them?”

“Yeah. They both go to church a lot, and I never go to church. They’re really more best friends with each other, but they are nice. I ate lunch with them last year too.”

“I see.”

“You’d think there’d be more kids in our neighborhood,” she continues. “It’s a bummer. Like they’re all in junior high already. Or old people.”

Jack sighs. “You should go to summer camp. I’m going to tell your mom she should send you to summer camp next year.” 

Hannah wiggles her toes. “I’d like that.”

They’re quiet for a moment, and then she asks, “So we can stay here all afternoon, right?”

“Yeah, sure. As long as you don’t burn yourself to a crisp. Shouldn’t we head back around four though?” _To meet Nath._

“Nath can meet us here.”

“Oh really?” He sighs. “I get the feeling you have this all planned out, and it’s useless to argue with you.” 

“Pretty much.”

“Can I ask why you want me to hang with your brother?”

Hannah doesn’t speak for a moment. Then she looks over at him. “Lydia really liked you. She was your friend, wasn’t she?”

A lump in his throat. “Yeah, she was. Even though we didn’t go over to each other’s houses.” 

“She was really sad about Nath going to college, you know.”

“Yeah. She talked about that a lot.”

“Did she talk about me?” Hannah twists her ponytail, looks wistful. 

“Of course,” Jack lies.

Hannah sighs and flops back in her chair. “So we should be friends. For Lydia’s sake. We can remember her better together than alone.”

“Huh.” Jack’s stomach twists, even as he feels a sad smile curl his lips. What an odd thing to say. And so true. 

“Besides, I know you’ve always wanted to be Nath’s friend.”

“I don’t know why,” Jack muses. “He’s not very nice to me.” And then, more seriously, because the fact that he could never have imagined he’d be having this conversation a week ago is no excuse for just saying things like he’s talking to himself, he adds, “It doesn’t really matter anymore though. We’re both leaving for college, in what—three, four days?” Wow, fuck.

“Why do you like him so much?” Hannah asks.

“Uh.” Jack can actually feel his face getting hot. Let me enumerate the reasons, little Miss Lee. Jesus. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you later, okay? Do you want a popsicle?”

She gives him another look and heaves a heavy sigh. “Later, okay?” she mimics in a dopey voice. “I’m going to get in the water.”  
  
  
  
The afternoon trickles by. It’s lazy, warm, and fun, actually. Jack shifts their chairs hour by hour to keep pace with the shade. He can’t help but keep his eyes glued to Hannah while she’s in the pool, despite the lifeguard and the multitudes. But when she takes a break, he lets himself read the John Wyndham novel he’d shoved into his backpack. He also has a Le Guin paperback that he’d impulsively packed for Hannah when he noticed she didn’t have a book, and his opinion of his straight talking little companion climbs even higher when she takes the book with seeming pleasure and buries herself in the story for a whole hour. They pick at their sandwiches and demolish red checkered baskets of french fries. And Cokes and great white shark popsicles, of course. All the good things. Because why not? The kid deserves a treat. Jack has always been a little sad to be an only child; he used to think he’d never be lonely if he had siblings. And here’s Hannah, the last and littlest, the left out. He won’t pity her though. She’s a cool little person, and it seems like she’s doing okay, considering everything. 

She talks him into getting in the pool eventually, so they splash around trying to teach each other strokes they remember from lessons or from watching Nath swim. They make some up too. The cat paddle, the anchovy, the golden retriever. If it bothers them the way their respective peers stare at them from time to time, neither of them mentions it. 

Out of the water again, Hannah’s adjusted her lounge so that it’s flat, and she’s fallen asleep wrapped in her towel with her hands curled up underneath her cheek. The shade has crept away from Jack to blanket her completely, but he doesn’t mind stretching out in the late afternoon sun. People haven’t really started sloping off home yet, but there’s a siesta calm over the place; more people are lounging than swimming, and the kids’ games sound subdued. Maybe it’s just because he’s sleepy. The sun feels nice on his bare chest and legs. He’s given up on the paragraph he’s been staring at for too long and is just fanning the pages of the book against the skin of his palm again and again. They feel smooth and soft, even though they’re edges, capable of cutting. A paradox. 

“Marco! Polo! Polo!” the kids call, splashing in and out of the water.

Jack shivers. _Got you. You’re It._  He and Nath with the whole pool to themselves. 

A shadow falls across Jack, and he drops his book.

It’s Nath. He’s looking down at Jack, eyebrows raised. “Marco?” 

“Polo,” Jack murmurs, a reflex.

“Found you,” Nath says, mouth curving wryly. “Looks like my sister’s asleep.”

“She tired herself out swimming. She’s a good swimmer. Like you.” 

“Thanks."

Jack’s wearing his sunglasses which cover not only his expression but also most of the dark circles beneath his eyes, so he doesn’t feel self-conscious staring at Nath. Nath looks cool and contained—very much _not_ like a person who’s been covered in sunblock, soaked in chlorine, and baked in the sun for hours. His dark hair is combed and parted at the side, and his light blue Oxford looks crisp, rolled up at the sleeves to show his strong, browned arms. His jeans are faded, but they fit him closely; they’re too long, scrunching in a funny way at his ankles over his sneakers. He’s standing with his hands in his front pockets. Jack should be able to read his expressions better by now, after years of furtive study, but he’s still a novice, and Nath looks calm, impenetrable. 

“Want to sit?” Jack asks. “She’s been down a while. She’ll probably wake up soon.”

Nath hesitates, looks away from Jack at the pool to where the buoys section off lanes. “I thought I might—I thought I might swim."

“Oh, right. Yeah, of course.”

Jack watches him disappear into the changing room, reappear, slip into the water, dunk, and then start laps. Freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly stroke. He swims for a long time without pausing for more than a moment. Jack won’t look away. 

Finally Nath rests at the side of the pool, panting, chin on folded arms. Looking at Jack. He’s slicked his hair back, away from his face. Jack wants to tousle it back down over his forehead, wants to lift Nath’s hands in his own and examine the scabs on his knuckles. 

On impulse, he takes off his shades, gets up, and walks to Nath, lowers himself into the water beside him. Probably the wrong thing; he’ll always do the wrong thing with Nath. But it’s moth to flame. He can’t help himself, can’t hold off drawing near, not when those dark eyes are actually taking him in with something other than disdain. He lets himself sink under the water before rising and pushing back his sodden curls. 

Nath still has one arm on the pool edge, but he’s turned his body toward Jack. They’re very close together. Tagging, touching close. Jack has slipped right into his space, closer than he’d intended.

“You know,” Jack says softly, speaking through the heart in his throat, “That day at the Y when we were about seven. I wasn’t trying to tease you or anything like that. I wasn’t—with those other kids. They were dicks.”

Nath makes an arrested, hum of a sound in his throat at that, lips parted to speak. Jack watches his wary eyes, his exquisite clumped wet lashes. 

“I wanted it to be us against them, you know?”

“You remember that,” Nath breathes, an observation, no inflection of surprise.

“Yeah.” _Of course._

“I remember—“ Nath swallows, still not looking away from him, and the closeness and the eye contact, oh, they’re going to make Jack feel high; he’s not used to this. “Do you remember,” Nath corrects, “you swam so much that summer that your hair turned green? At the ends where you were really blonde?”

And he honest to God reaches out and runs his long fingers down a stray piece of Jack’s hair, across his temple and down over his cheekbone. 

Jack says some words. He thinks they are “I walked to the pool everyday that summer,” but he’s not entirely sure. He might be shivering.

“You looked funny.” Nath’s hand drops back into the water. “But you didn’t care.”

“I cared about a lot of things,” Jack says, nonsensical. 

“Come on, Hannah’s awake,” Nath is saying, and then he pulls himself out of the water. He runs his hand through his hair, shaking it out, and Jack, at his heels, is covered with water droplets. No scarcity this time. Still precious.  
  
  
  
Nath only hesitates a moment before he climbs into the backseat of the Beetle and lets Hannah reclaim the front seat.

Jack has quickly re-imagined Hannah as a sociable if not garrulous person over the past several days, he realizes, and it’s funny to have her resume her wide-eyed, silent demeanor now that her big brother’s around, leaning forward between them to poke at the busted radio and tapping his fingers against the seat, which is covered in dog hair and a wool blanket. He’s being as flighty as Jack usually is—not the still classroom self that Jack’s spent hours staring at.

“So you’re leaving soon, yeah?” Jack fishes for something to say. “You going to drive all the way out east?”

“Tuesday, I think. We’re all driving, yeah, and shipping most of my stuff.”

“Just the necessities,” Hannah chimes in. “We’re going to bring the rest on Family Weekend.”

“That’s right.”

In the rearview mirror, Jack can see that Nath is smiling.

He wishes he wasn’t looking, that he looked away in time to miss the surprise on Nath’s face, when Hannah says, “Jack’s going to college out east too. His college is in Vermont, and he’s going to study writing.”

Oh, of course. Nath is probably surprised that Jack’s fuck up persona graduated high school, let alone charted a course toward higher education. It’s a sharp reminder that Nath doesn’t know the first thing about Jack, that he hasn’t spent the past year digging for information about him from his family members like a creep. He sighs. It’d be nice if his crush brought out the best in him. But no, unrequited love fucking sucks. 

“What school?” Nath asks.

“Bennington. It’s small.”

“I never knew you were a writer.”

“Yeah.” _Well, clearly you didn’t, Nath._ “Hey, here you guys are.” 

They have conveniently arrived at the Lee house. He hopes they didn’t notice that he really stepped on it that last half mile. Jack idles at the curb, keeping his hands on the wheel.

Nath leans forward, tapping on Hannah’s seat like he’s ready to push it to the dash and escape from the car. But Hannah’s looking at Jack, twisting her damp towel in her hands. 

“Got your book, Hannah Banana?” Jack asks. 

She nods, picking up _A Wizard of Earthsea_ from her lap. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for taking me to the pool.” 

Nath echoes her thanks as he climbs out of the car after her. He leans down to peer at Jack for a moment and says, “See you.”

“Yeah, see you around.”

Jack wonders why they didn’t just say goodbye. Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, is coming up fast. When he gets home, Bird is happy to see him, woofing at the door and then dancing circles around Jack until he puts down his backpack and chases the dog into the mudroom to pour him a cup of dry food. His mom’s bedroom door is closed, and the house is dark and silent.

He flicks on his amp and plays the record that’s already on the machine—The Electric Chairs B side—while he strips off his t-shirt, trunks, and jeans. Bird turns and settles on the discarded clothes, snuffling happily. Jack has his own bathroom connected to his room, a luxury. He studies his black eyes, nose nearly to the mirror, while the shower heats up, and he makes a futile promise not to abuse himself so long thinking about Nath’s random pool caress that he empties the hot water tank.

He’s so worked up, the water’s barely tepid and the needle’s only just begun clicking insistently when he turns off the shower, flushed, panting, and very clean. 

“Are you decent?” His mother shouts, pounding on his door.

“Um, no,” he yells, fumbling to get his towel wrapped around his waist. 

“Well, don’t have a heart attack. Phone’s for you.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She clacks away down the hall in her work heels. He turns off the record player and flops down on his bed, wondering idly whether Christopher is desperate enough to have looked him up already; wasn’t the offer that Jack could call him? He yanks the whole phone from his night table to his mattress before picking up the receiver. “Hello?” 

“Um, hello. Jack?”

“Yeah?” Jack’s eyebrows shoot up. That’s not Chris’s baritone—

“It’s Nath. Uh, Nathan Lee.”

“Oh. Hi.”

Surreal. _Hello Nathan Lee. I was just wanking to your pretty face in the shower. I mean, thinking of you. Funny you should call. Kismet._

The line is silent for a moment. Jack reins himself in and attempts a neutral tone. “How’s it going?” 

“All right.” A beat. “Do you have plans tonight?”

“What?” Plans. Something fun. Right, it’s only Saturday night. “Uh, no. Not as such. Why?”

“Do you want to—I mean, Hannah and I were going to order pizza and watch the Saturday night movie. We were wondering if you want to come over?"

“Oh. What’s the movie?” Jack hits himself in the face with the pillow he’s been gripping. “I mean, it doesn’t matter. Sure, I’ll come.” He swallows down more self-sabotage, gems such as _Why are you inviting me to your house?_ and _Why are you letting your little sister convince you to try to hang out with me?_

 “Great. Uh, you can come over whenever, really.”

Jack twists to see his clock. It’s barely six. “Alright. I have to do a few things around the house, but I’ll walk over when I’m done, okay?”

“Sure. Well, see you then.”

“Yeah. ‘Bye."

Blinking up at his ceiling, brain fuzzing, Jack’s thoughts drift off somewhere. “What’s happening to my life?” he wonders.

 

✭

 

What do you bring to the house of your standoffish secret crush when he suddenly invites you over for pizza? You know, after he's finished assaulting you for having a hand in the death of his sister and has finally realized you’re a decent guy? Or at least someone with whom it’s acceptable to voluntarily share a room, breathe the same oxygen? Someone it might not be repulsive to sit next to on a couch during a movie? Jack settles on bringing a six pack of Coke to Nath's house. Nath is technically babysitting, after all. And if there’s a fifth of Evan Williams hanging out at the bottom of Jack’s backpack under some notebooks and a balled up hoodie, then, well, why not leave it there, just in case? God, he’s dreaming. 

So here he is, dreaming, slouched at one edge of the couch holding his can of Coke, legs sprawled wide in front of him in a careful simulacrum of ease and comfort. Nath sits against the other arm of the couch; his lithe form seems to take up a bare sliver of its space. His arms and ankles are crossed, and his head is tipped back against the top of the cushion. There’s about as much space between them as can be. Hannah and Bird are curled up in an elaborate blanket and pillow heap on the carpet in front of them. For most of the feature, Hannah squirmed about munching her pizza and slurping her pop, feeding Bird all of their crusts (which she calls "pizza bones”). Now she’s got her arms wrapped around a large pillow and she appears to be drifting, just in time for the film credits. Jack’s impressed that she can sleep so easily. _Village of the Damned_ was kind of creepy. 

Jack had calculated that the latest he could show up at the Lees while remaining within the bounds of politeness and Nath’s dinner invitation was 8:30, a half an hour before the movie would begin. He didn’t really have anything to do at home. He let himself fall asleep on his bed for an hour, still wrapped in his towel. Then he played Pong for a while and did the few dishes that were in the sink. The invitation— _come over whenever, really_ —tugged at his navel like a magic spell, trying to summon him out the door and down the street. Though he grit his teeth and tried to distract himself, he couldn’t focus on anything other than the awkwardness and doom waiting for him at the Lees. 

_You’re a weirdo and an ingrate_ , his brain had declared. _You finally get a chance to spend time with Nath, after everything, and you’re not even happy about it?_

Jack squints at the screen as the argument barges back into his head to replay itself. 

_It’s not that I’m_ not _happy to be here spending time with Nath. It’s just that things are undeniably strange between us—well, not even strange. There’s no normal between us. There never has been._  

_And I still owe him an explanation._

When he had showed up on the doorstep at 8:20, things were just as awkward as he had feared. The three of them had settled in the living room with their food and had managed small talk about their neighborhood, the movie, and, again, about college, quietly but bravely led by Hannah via a string of odd questions and non-sequiturs. At least after the movie started there had been little talking. Hannah and Nath were rapt, silent movie-viewers. Even watching a fucking horror flick. Jack had worked hard to reign in his twitchy impulses, shouts, and desire to throw popcorn at the screen whenever the characters made bad decisions. 

“Well, what’d you think of it?” Jack asks Nath in a hushed tone, mindful of Hannah’s slumber.

“It was alright. Could’ve been scarier. Alien children are cool.” Nath un-pretzels himself and turns on the couch to face Jack. 

“A decent summary,” Jack agrees. “Well, thanks for having me over. I suppose I should get going and let you get Hannah Banana settled for bed.” 

“She likes sleeping down here,” Nath says. “It’s kind of a treat. Our parents used to let me and Lydia fall asleep watching the Saturday night movie down here sometimes. Like a sleepover, you know. Except just us.” He wrinkles his nose, frowns a bit. “You don’t have to go yet.”

“Yeah? Um, yeah, I can stay a while if you want. What do you want to do?”

“Well, we could talk,” Nath offers, tone hesitant. 

“Alright.” Just like that, Jack’s heart is thunking like crazy in his chest. He’ll probably start to sweat in a moment. _Idiot. Get it together._

“Funny, isn’t it?” Nath says. “I’ve known you longer than everyone else in my life, except my family, and we barely know how to talk to each other.”

Jack would have gone with _we don’t know how to talk to each other,_ period. But the _barely_ is nice. “That’s not true,” he says. “You didn’t meet me until we were what—six or seven? You went to preschool and kindergarten with most of the kids in our class.”

“Oh. Yeah, well. You know what I mean.”

Jack smiles grimly. “I do.”

“I’ve had a lot of misconceptions about you. I—ah—I want to put them aside. I want to talk to you. It’s just hard to know where to begin, you know?”

Jack swallows. “Yeah. I know.” 

“Alcohol would help,” Nath says, surprising Jack. 

“Mind reader.”

Nath snorts. “Hardly. It’s only logical.” 

And suddenly they’re laughing together. “I do happen to have this.” Jack pulls the whiskey out of his backpack and holds it up.  “A question for a question then? We can trade answers and the whiskey bottle.” 

“Ugh, I don’t know if I can drink that stuff after the other night. I drank—a lot of it.” 

He does look queasy even just staring at the bottle. 

“Good story?”

“Not really. I was alone just trying to blot everything out.” He says it lightly, like it might be a good, funny story, but the thought of Nath drinking whiskey alone makes Jack hurt; he wishes, stupidly, that he could have been with Nath that night. Someone should have been there. 

“I’m the same way with gin, actually,” Jack says, dropping the whiskey back into his pack. 

“Wait, give me a minute.” Nath scrambles up and disappears into the kitchen. Jack hears some scuffling, and a few minutes later, Nath returns with two glass tumblers and a label-less wine bottle; there’s a thin coat of dust on the dark green glass that tells a story of years spent lost in a cupboard. 

“My parents don’t really drink,” he says sheepishly. “I think this is plum wine. One of my dad’s colleagues at the college makes it. He used to give us bottles for Christmas.” 

“I’m intrigued.” Jack smiles and lifts the bottle, admiring the pulp sediment that swirls inside like a snow globe. "No wine opener?”

Nath shakes his head. “Can you—?”

“Yeah.” Jack fishes his pocket knife out of the front zip of his backpack and goes to work on the cork. He’s only able to push it into the bottle, but Nath still looks impressed. “Won’t keep this way, but here you go.”

“It’s probably awful,” Nath says, tipping the wine into their glasses. 

“A little syrupy, but I wouldn’t say awful.” Jack lets the tangy fruit flavor sit on his tongue. He looks down into his glass. The wine is a beautiful amber color that couldn’t be enjoyed through the dark bottle. What he won’t say is that the cordial-like sweetness strikes him as perfectly summery and makes him think about licking the sugar off Nath’s lips. The Evan Williams wouldn’t have had this effect; it would have made him rough voiced and hungry, sure. This wine is…well, it’s romantic.

“So who goes first?” Nath says after a long moment of sitting and sipping in silence. 

“You can. If you want,” Jack says. Bravely. He forces himself to meet Nath’s eyes in hopes of communicating some semblance of sangfroid. _You can ask, it’s okay, I can take it._

“Alright.” He glances down at Hannah’s sleeping form. “Let’s go upstairs so we don’t wake Hannah.” 

“Okay.” 

Jack picks up the bottle and follows Nath toward the stairs. Bird looks up from where he’s sleeping next to Hannah but makes no move to follow them, so he doesn’t bother telling him to stay. They end up in the hall that Jack recognizes from the morning of their fight. They must be going to Nath’s room. Jack’s heart quickens further to a rabbit-like pace.

The room is dimly lit by a small lamp by Nath’s bed, which is actually made, covered smoothly with a blue striped comforter. Nath doesn’t turn on the overhead light. Jack gives the room a perfunctory glance, noticing suitcases, boxes, and a general neatness shining through the disarray of packing, but he can’t focus on the space; he’s watching Nath sit down on the bed and then position himself cross-legged near its center. He looks at Jack expectantly, so Jack sets the bottle down next to the lamp and crawls opposite from Nath, mirroring his posture. 

“Your room is nice,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“So, do you have a question?”

Nath exhales sharply and rubs his neck, takes another drink, wraps both hands around his tumbler. Marshaling his thoughts. “Okay. When you said that—that the thing you told Lydia was about me—“

He pauses halfway through the question, waiting for confirmation. Jack nods. 

“Okay, so, what did you mean?” 

Jack isn’t really surprised. He was hoping to have the chance to warm up to this, to field a few softer inquiries first. Comical idea. The questions between them all have spikes and sharp edges. He drains his glass and refills it, holds out the bottle to top off Nath’s.

“I’m trying to think of how to tell you,” he says, opting for honest stalling, at least. “It’s probably not something you’ll appreciate hearing. But, ah, I hope you’ll take it in the spirit that it’s meant.”

Nath is just staring at him, guarded, waiting. “Which is?"

Jack can’t help smiling at him. He is so beautiful. Even if he laughs or recoils or points Jack out the door a few minutes from now, Jack will hold onto this image and the memory of this evening—sharing plum wine, sitting knee to knee on Nath’s bed, Nath’s long lashes against his cheek when he looks down into his lap, his dark eyes resting on Jack with softness, maybe shyness. “Kindly,” Jack says, at last. 

“Alright.”

“It’s like this—it’s always been you, for me, since we were little. I’ve—“ He stops, fights to catch his breath, to continue. “Nath, I’ve loved you since before I knew what love was—well, not sure that’s a thing, I guess we’re born understanding love—how about, I’ve loved you since what love meant to me was that you were my favorite person in the world, and all I wanted was for you to like me and hang out with me. I guess it just never worked out.” 

Nath’s eyes go wide. They just sit there. And sit there. While Nath stares at Jack like he’s never seen him before. “But…but…what about all the girls?”

Jack shrugs. “At least I hope you believe me now that Lydia and I were never—would never have been—together.” 

“How could you love me for all this time and never say anything?”

Jack frowns. “You always made it clear that you didn’t like me. My life’s been hard enough here without everyone knowing I’m a queer.” 

“You think I would have told people.”

“I didn’t say that. It just—I don’t know, you obviously didn’t like me, Nath. There didn’t seem like much of a point.”

“Right.” Nath’s ears and neck are flushed red. He sounds—kind of angry, actually. 

“Wait, this is seriously your reaction right now? You’re pissed I never told you?” 

“No,” Nath says—a definitive, heavy no that he punctuates by looking away and huffing the hair out of his face, which altogether has a kidish effect. “I thought you were always—fucking with me,” he says more softly, almost as if he’s talking to himself, thinking through this muddle. "What you said about my mom when she left. Going off with Lydia right in front of me. I was so angry.” He looks back at Jack. “Lydia knew?”

“I told her—that last day.”

“What did she say?”

“Ah—that I was pathetic for having feelings for someone who hated me.” Jack tries to laugh, but it doesn’t really come out. "I don’t think she meant it. I mean, if we had had another chance to talk, I think she would have said something different. I really believe we were friends. But she was—mad at me—and it just came out. And then—“ He shrugs. He’s not sure how he feels. This conversation is so much more…of a conversation than he had expected. All these words—maybe he should have just tried to kiss Nath instead, to show not tell. He could do without another punch to the face though. Well, and seriously, the talking is…lightening. In addition to scary as hell.

“This is so weird,” Nath says. He’s leaning forward to study Jack’s face. Jack can actually see his attention move across his features—over his curls, his wide mouth, the bit of stubble he missed on his cheek, perhaps. “I don’t even know if I’m gay,” Nath murmurs. Then he reaches out and touches the bridge of Jack’s nose, runs his fingers down over the bump of the break that will be there forever, a physical node point for all the ways Nath has changed him. Jack’s eyes flutter closed reflexively; he feels the touch everywhere. “Tell me again.”

“What?” Jack is lost. They’re both whispering, voices rough and wavering.

“How you—what you said about how you—feel about me,” he says, stumbling a bit.

Through his lashes, Jack can see that Nath is so close to him; his fingers still brush against the bump on his nose, so gentle against the half-healed tenderness that there’s only the slightest pain. Jack doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare breathe, for fear of scaring him away. And he’s asking Jack to say it again, to tell him. God. Trembling, he says, “Nath Lee, I’ve always loved you. I want you so much, you have no idea. I—“ 

Nath makes a low, hurt noise, and then Jack’s lap is full of him, and Jack wraps his arms around his waist without thinking. _Don’t go away._ He’s pressing his face against Jack’s, and Jack has coarse dark hair in his eyes and warm breath on his lips. Nath brushes his lips against Jack’s—just a light sweep, the contact quickly gone. Jack’s afraid he gasps. Just a small gasp. “Kiss me,” Nath says.

There’s a tiny sliver of a second—something you couldn’t even capture on a camera, probably, with the fastest shutter speed—where Jack’s thought is _but._ The word holds deep wells of fear, rejection, loneliness, of hating himself. The thought doesn’t slow him. He kisses Nath, running his lips back and forth over Nath’s until they part, hungry, and Jack can lick into the hotness of his mouth and taste him. Nath’s already straddling him— _fuck_ —and Jack runs a hand up under his shirt, splaying his hand against his back, wanting to feel as much of him as possible. Nath seems to be tangling his fingers in Jack’s curls; when they catch and tug, it feels amazing. And his other hand kneads against Jack’s chest through his shirt. 

Jack pulls back fractionally from their kiss just to feel Nath chase his mouth, press forward and catch Jack’s bottom lip between his teeth. He bites Jack’s lip tentatively, and Jack makes an embarrassing noise, tries to pull him closer. When he can break away from Nath’s mouth, Jack kisses across his jaw and down his neck; he knows he should resist the urge to suck and nip bruises into that perfect, tan skin—but the way Nath’s breathing has roughened into panting, and the way he’s pressing into Jack, pretty much rocking against him now, Jack can’t help himself. Nath squeezing him with his strong swimmer’s thighs, Nath rubbing against him—Jack is so hard, and with any other guy, he’d be working open belts and buttons and zips right now to get his palm pressed against cock, to finally feel his partner’s length and shape. If Jack pressed Nath back into the bed and stripped him down—God, Jack would give Nath head for days. He would swallow him so far down. He would choke on him. 

Except. _I don’t even know if I’m gay._  Those murmured words skate across the supernova of Jack's thoughts, fighting their way through _yes_ and _oh fuck_ and _more_ until he has to pull back and still his hands against Nath’s waist, his slippery, lovely, thick hair. “Nath,” he tries—because talking, forming sentences, fuck. “Nath—ah—is this okay? I don’t want to—push you.” 

“What? Oh.” Nath’s pupils are wide and his mouth is wet. The heat of his skin shows in a light flush. He looks just as lust-hazy and tongue tied as Jack feels. He meets Jack’s gaze, scattered. If there’s something in his expression beyond want, Jack can’t read it, but he doesn’t really trust his ability to read Nath. He’s been so wrong. “I don’t know, yes,” Nath says.

“It’s okay,” Jack manages, moving his fingers again through Nath’s hair. “You can think about it. There’s no hurry. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable if this isn’t what you want.”

“I’m so—I want—“ He looks down between them to where his legs are wrapped around Jack. He presses his hand against the hardness evident through his jeans and then shifts to find and press Jack’s aching erection. Jack inhales sharply. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never done this before with—with anybody. I’m sorry.”

“Oh my God, don’t be sorry. You’re amazing. This is perfect. I could do this for hours,” he says. Babbles, he suspects. 

Slowly, Nath grins at him. It’s a look Jack has not seen in—in ever. It makes Jack’s chest clench in a frantic feeling of _can I keep this person with me forever always_ , and he tries to grin back through the pain of it.

“But, like, why?” Nath’s grin falls away, and he looks down with a frown this time.

Jack dares to smooth the furrows between Nath’s brows with his thumb. “Uh, why what?”

“Why would you feel—this way about me?”

_Asks the boy who's coveted by Harvard_ , Jack thinks wryly. It feels terribly generic to speak the litany of _you’re smart you’re kind you’re funny you’re beautiful_ that has been obvious to him since the first confused pangs of his crush. What had he told Hannah by the pool? _I’ll tell you later, okay?_   Somehow he doubts he’d get away with that line here. Not with Nath looking at him with this sort of wonder and searching, desperate casualness. 

_Here goes._ Jack tugs Nath’s hips so he’s close again and presses a kiss to his neck. “I think you’re wicked smart, for one.” He kisses the curve of Nath’s ear. “I love that you’re obsessed with space.” His temple, his cheekbone. “You’re really proud and self-possessed. And confident.” Nath snorts, shakes his head. Jack ducks a bit to kiss the skin beneath his jaw. “You’re fierce. The way you pinned me to that tree like you were ready to just keep me there until I talked. The way you’d do anything for your sisters, for the people you love.” Nath has gone taut beneath Jack’s touch, and Jack leans back with a small sigh. Mentioning the cemetery was a mistake. Foot in mouth again. “Sorry,” he says.

“It’s okay. It’s just—it’s still hard to talk about Lydia.” He leans away to grab his forgotten wine and take a long drink. "I wanted to beat you to a pulp that day.” 

Jack waits, wondering what to say. He’s still turned on and acutely aware of Nath’s weight against him, his nearness, which could overwhelm Jack again in a second if he let it—if Nath wanted it. But it feels like things might have taken a turn, like the heady, hungry mood between them might drift away. “Nath,” he says, simply. Because he can. Because Nath is here, for this moment at least. 

“Jack,” Nath returns instantly. He draws his brows together and licks his lips, as if tasting the name. "Let’s not talk about it anymore right now.”

“Alright. Hey, I know you don’t feel about me the way I feel about you,” Jack says carefully. “And that’s okay. I know it’s a lot—that I’ve felt this way for a long time.” He takes a breath. "We’re both leaving this week. And you’re not going to hurt me. If you want, I can show you what it feels like to—uh—be with somebody like this.” He rubs his hands over Nath’s thighs, dipping down to press against his inseam and his cock. He hopes Nath won’t miss the lie he’s slipped into the middle of that little speech.

Nath is still frowning at him, and Jack gets the sense that he’s stumbled somewhere, said something wrong. But Nath yanks Jack’s face to his and kisses him, all tongue and teeth, and oh, Jack could so easily forget that he’s a virgin to all of this. “Can you show me?” Nath says into his mouth. “Please.”

That word goes straight to his cock. “Will you be able to tell me if you want me to stop?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

Nath makes a frustrated sound and kisses Jack harder. “Yes.”

“I’m going to keep asking you,” Jack warns. 

“Fine,” Nath huffs, bites his lip like he’s out for blood. 

Jack groans. He pulls back and peels Nath’s shirt off, then his own. There’s a tangle as they go for each other’s pants. It’s not that he doesn’t want to savor this, but he needs to feel Nath’s skin without obstruction. As soon as he wrestles Nath free of all that denim, he pushes him down onto the bed and runs his mouth along the length of Nath’s cock. It’s long like his own and delightfully thick, the head red and leaking pre-come that’s begging to be licked up, really. Nath gasps and writhes against the bed as Jack swallows him as deeply as he can. Jack pushes until he can really feel the head of his cock at the back of his throat, till he’s gagging around the base, eyes watering. God, he wants this. 

“Oh. Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Nath gasps as Jack finds a rhythm of sliding up and down, rolling his tongue over the head of Nath’s cock. Glancing up through wet lashes, he sees Nath is fisting the sheets with one hand. He reaches out and buries the other in Jack’s tawny curls, pulling at them. _Harder,_ Jack wants to tell him.

Before Nath can get to the edge, Jack lifts off his cock and pulls himself back up the bed, holding himself over Nath’s body until Nath lunges up and kisses him messily, pressing his tongue deep into Jack as if searching for his own taste. Jack reaches down to wrap his hand around Nath, sliding his fingers through his slick saliva, tightening as Nath moans and thrusts up into his fist. 

“Okay?” Jack asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good,” Nath pants. Then he twists quickly and rolls Jack onto his side so they’re facing each other. 

“Fuck,” Jack exclaims as Nath’s fingers curl around his neglected cock. Nath quickly withdraws his hand and licks it, flicking Jack a gaze that’s heated and a little embarrassed. 

“Yes,” Jack encourages, stroking him. 

Jack pants against Nath’s mouth as warm, wet fingers circle him, explore, and squeeze. He moves his thumb against the sensitive spot beneath the head, and Jack shudders, pressing his face against Nath’s. Nath will make him come so easily. He’s so hard. He can’t think. Except— 

“You don’t have any lube, do you?”

“Mm—I—yeah, I do. It’s—open the drawer there.” 

Jack twists and reaches for the drawer of Nath’s nightstand, fumbles blindly until his fingers brush a container shape. 

“Yeah, that’s it,” Nath says. He’s still trailing his fingers along Jack’s cock, stroking more confidently now. “Um, so—what are you thinking?”

Jack fumbles with the Vaseline lid, dips his fingers in, and then spreads the slippery substance over Nath’s cock. He feels like velvet. “Better, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Nath’s brown eyes are so warm on his. He wants to kiss him forever. Nath looks like he _trusts_ Jack. 

“I was wondering if you—if you want to fuck me,” Jack ventures. He swallows. “I mean, no pressure. I think you might—ahh—“ Nath runs his palm over the head of Jack’s cock, and it sends a jolt through him, making him slow the rhythm of his touch against Nath. “I think you’d like it.”

Nath’s eyes are wide again, and his wet lips are parted in surprise, even as he’s arching into Jack’s touch, thrusting into his hand. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, I—are you sure? I mean, that you want to, you know.”

_Of course._  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure. Only if you want to. Maybe it’s a little fast,” he concedes. “I can’t think straight when I’m around you.”  

Nath smiles. “That explains some things.” He looks a little wrecked, with his tousled hair, wide pupils, and flushed, smooth chest. “I do want to fuck you. I don’t really know how though. Maybe we should just—”

“I know. It’s okay.” Jack kisses him. “I will show you. If—ah—you ever want to do this again.”

“Mmm,” Nath grinds against him. He presses against Jack’s neck, takes his earlobe between his teeth, flicks his tongue around the curve of Jack’s ear. “You could tell me what you would do,” he breathes.

“I would slick my fingers up more—and use them to work myself open—to stretch myself for you.” 

“Oh, oh fuck,” Nath groans and fucks Jack’s hand more frantically. 

Jack speeds up his strokes, tries to push his embarrassment away. “And maybe you could help.”

“Yeah?”

Jack nuzzles into Nath until he pulls back from Jack’s neck and lets Jack kiss him, lets Jack look at him. “Yeah. You’d fuck me with your fingers—just one at first and then a second—until I—until I was dripping and loose for you—and begging for more. I’d want your cock.”

“Oh fuck, Jack.”

“I’d want you to fill me up. You’re so thick. You’d feel so good.” 

They’re panting into each other, hair damp with sweat, faces pressed together. Nath looks mesmerized as Jack speaks against his lips, punctuating the words with kisses and sucking Nath’s lower lip. Jack catches Nath’s hand that’s wrapped around him and pulls it away, squeezing his palm; he wants Nath to just feel him for now, his sure twisting strokes up and down his shaft, over his head. 

“You’d press your cock into me, and I’d be so tight around you. You could fuck me so hard, Nath.”

“Jack,” Nath whimpers.

“You could just fuck me to pieces. God, I’d love it so much.”

“Jack, I—I’m going to—“

Jack pushes Nath onto his back and slides down his body to take Nath into his mouth again; he dips and sucks, pressing Nath against his tongue and the back of his throat, swollen lips meeting his hand where it’s working the base of Nath’s cock. Nath cries out and shakes as he comes, and Jack holds him together through it, free hand pressed to his ribs, letting his mouth run more and more lightly down Nath’s hardness until the sensation becomes too much. Nath drags him back up to press their bodies together. Rubbing against Nath, on edge, it’s not going to take much more for Jack to get himself there. Nath’s fingers lace with his over his cock and stroke him just once—and again—before he’s coming onto Nath’s stomach, gasping into Nath’s neck, vision exploding into blackness and star explosions of light.   
  
  
  
He comes back to himself slowly, aware of Nath’s body curled tightly against his. Nath is lying still, his breath a ragged rhythm tickling Jack’s ear. Jack wants to pull back and look him in the face, see how he’s doing amidst all this now that the urgency has abated, now that they’ve chased each other’s bodies through want into a lull of satisfaction. Does Nath feel afraid? Does he feel sorry? Jack remembers the heavy tangle of emotions that swept over him the first time he got together with another guy—how he felt after, creeping back into his camp dorm with stealth he never had to use at home, where his house was always empty—was always purely _his_ —at night. He had felt elation, lust, a thrill of discovery, even relief at having something of _an answer_ ; yet the rush was tempered by doubt, worry, fear. Fear, fear, fear, really. That was a big one. He remembers thinking, _what the fuck is going to happen to me?_ The guy he’d been with hadn’t wanted to talk about the tangle, and at the time, Jack had assumed that meant he didn’t feel it. They were both only fourteen.

Jack doesn’t dare look at Nath, not yet, but he will in another minute when he’s mastered his fear. Maybe it was a mistake, going so far with Nath; maybe he should have known better than to act on Nath’s interest; maybe he’s taken advantage, though he tried so hard not to do so. 

“Hey,” he says. “How are you doing?”

Nath’s next breath quivers, a long exhale. “I’m okay. I’m okay. That was—wow. My brain is still…out in space, you know?” 

“Yeah.”

“But also it’s like—so crazy. I’m sorry, I—I might freak out a little bit.” 

Jack’s pulse kicks up again, but he tries to push away his own anxiety. “It’s okay,” he says. “Freaking out is normal. This is a lot to take in.” 

He pulls back and looks at Nath, who is screwing his eyes shut and working to modulate his breathing. 

“Nath,” he says softly. “Can you tell me what would be helpful? Do you want me to stop touching you? Or—uh—go?”

Nath shakes his head. Says, “You should go if you want.” 

“I don’t want,” Jack whispers, reaching up to stroke Nath’s hair. 

Nath sniffs and then starts to cry—not big, messy sobs, the kind of crying that Jack does sometimes. It looks like he’s fighting to hold his face still, to maintain control, but tears are welling up and running across the cheek that’s pressed against the bed spread. 

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay,” Jack murmurs. “Nath, you’re okay. You’re so much more than okay. You’re so fucking beautiful. And kind. Whatever you do with your life, it’s going to be amazing. You work so hard, and you’re so fucking smart. I see that. Your family sees that.”

Nath’s expression twists, and he does sob, once. “No, they don’t.”

“Lydia saw that. How fucking amazing you are. Hannah sees that.” 

Nath nods, eyes squeezed shut. 

“And your mom and dad.”

“No.”

“Yes. Yes, they do. They bought you that plane ticket this spring. They’re going to drive you out to school. They’re so proud of you.”

He nods again.

“Hey, will you look at me? You don’t have to, but—” 

“Okay.” Nath swallows, runs a hand over his face, looks at Jack through tears.

“Whatever you do with your life, it’s going to be so amazing,” Jack repeats. “And it can be anything. You get to choose. You getting together with me tonight doesn’t have to mean anything, okay? You can be with girls. You can be with guys. It doesn’t mean anything about you until you say it does. You get to say. You get to choose. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Do you believe me?”

“No. Maybe.” He smiles just the tiniest bit at Jack. “I want to. I’m sorry—I’m being so, ugh.” He hiccups, scrubs at his face. 

“You don’t have to apologize,” Jack insists. “It’s true though. _I’m_ sorry if I sound like a tool, like I’m giving you advice or whatever. It’s just—I wish someone had said that to me after my first time doing this, you know?” He keeps running his fingers through Nath’s hair. Steady.

“Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to be sorry.” 

“Jack,” Nath says, and he’s gasping, kind of laughing, kind of sobbing again. 

_It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay._ “Yeah,” he says. 

“You’re wrong about this not mattering to me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Something like that. You said I couldn’t hurt you.”

“That might have been an exaggeration.” He brushes his hand down Nath’s neck and rubs light circles on his back. “But it’s alright. We’re both going to be alright, yeah?” 

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” Nath’s tear-streaked face contorts into a frown. He is so fierce. 

“You don’t need to worry about that right now.” Jack’s not sure whether he’s soothing or deflecting. Beneath his calm, his chest aches. He wants to beg for affirmation. _Tell me you really wanted this._ But he would never forgive himself for pushing Nath an inch further. _What can I do to make this better for you?_ “Do you want to clean up? Take a shower?”

“Could you just—can I ask you a big favor?”

“Of course.”

“Would you stay here with me a little longer before you go home?”

“I can stay the night if you want.”

“Thanks. But you should probably go.” 

Jack swallows. “Yeah, okay.”

Nath presses their damp foreheads together with shaky hands, kisses him. When they slip underneath the covers, he nestles even closer to Jack. 

Jack waits a long, long time until he’s sure Nath’s sleeping deeply before he untangles their bodies and leaves. 

 

✭

 

_Don’t wake me up,_ Jack writes on a half sheet that he tapes to the door of his room. _Stayed up late._

He lies awake for hours before he’s able to drift off. At first he listens to records. Then he just stares at his ceiling. Bird snores and twitches at the foot of the bed. A little after four in the morning, Jack rolls over and finds his notebook journal in a pile of books under his bed. He pulls out the pen that’s jammed into the spiral binding and begins to write. He must break the night down to an excruciatingly microscopic scale; he goes detail by tiny detail, slowly, filling sheets until his wrist cramps, so he will forget nothing. So he will remember not just the guilt and the disappointment but also every wonder of Nath’s voice and touch. His dearest fantasy come true for just one night. _You got one night,_ he tells himself. _More than you ever, ever expected. It’s enough._ Only when he’s written everything, and it’s going on six thirty in the morning, does he shove the book and pen under his pillow and roll over into exhausted sleep.  
  
  
  
He stays knocked out until the evening. His mother has written her own message on the back of his note and has moved the paper to the kitchen table. _Went in to the hospital early. Lasagna covered in the oven for you to heat up. (Save some for me!) PS—Boxes for you in the living room._

His head fucking hurts. He microwaves some lasagna and leftover coffee and consumes both standing up at the kitchen sink, gazing out the window without seeing anything. He suspects his mother rescued Bird from his room midday and took him out, which she is wont to do when her energetic days overlap with his comatose ones. Since he’s not sure, he puts on his sneakers and jogs Bird around the lake as night falls. He sees a few neighbors—both outdoors and through windows lit up like advent calendar tableaus—but no one from the Lee family. When he and Bird get home, he blares punk records and collapses his bedroom into the moving boxes his mother provided. His instinct is to pack neatly, to move through his junk methodically and make thoughtful choices about what he’ll want in Vermont and what can live in the attic. He certainly has enough time to do the task thoroughly. His mother probably intends for him to pack what he’s taking with him and leave the rest of the room intact to be enjoyed during vacations and summers, but that feels dishonest somehow. He’s never going to live here again. In the future, _his room_ will be elsewhere, and this room will be a guest room. There’s no reason it shouldn’t look like a guest room now. Stripped of his posters and shelves, he can see all the holes he needs to spackle and cover with paint. Hell, he could probably start in on repainting the whole room tomorrow or the next day; he could pick a fresh color his mom will like. 

As he boxes books and sorts the contents of his closet between boxes and duffels, he plans the project in his mind, arranges the small steps around the other pre-move errands he needs to complete. _Keep busy,_ he tells himself. He can’t think too hard about last night, about what it meant, or he’ll come undone. If he stays busy, he’ll stave off the guilt and the grief. The stabbing memory of Nath’s confused tears and self-loathing. Jack had done that to him—had mired him in all that upset. Somehow it feels heavier than all the slights and accusations Nath has leveled at him over the years. _Stop thinking about it._

At one in the morning, Jack makes a fresh pot of coffee and pours it into a tall, glass-insulated thermos. He drives to the hospital and lets one of the night reception staff direct him to his mother’s current station. He reads more of his novel in the waiting area while he waits for Dr. Wolff to appear, relishing the leisurely way Wyndham's sea aliens set about destroying his characters’ world; it’s kind of relaxing for a space invasion story. The lounge is blissfully empty for once. Visiting hours are long over, but sometimes Jack crosses paths with weeping relatives anyway, and when it’s bad it tends to put him off this place for a couple weeks. 

“Good morning, son,” his mom greets him, kissing both his cheeks as if they’re meeting at a French cafe instead of somewhere with florescent lighting. She’s set down two plastic cafeteria mugs on the magazine-strewn table in front of them, and she waves her hand for Jack to do the coffee-pouring honors. “Delicious. Thank you,” she says, taking a large sip of the coffee.

“Thank you for the boxes,” he returns.

“So you’ve been packing.”

“I’ve made a lot of progress. Finished my bookcases and my closet. I was thinking tomorrow I could re-paint the whole room, if there’s a color you want me to try.” 

“Something less beige?” 

“Well, no pressure.”

She sighs and props her heels up atop _The Atlantic._ “I think there’s still a couple gallons of 'oatmeal' in the garage.”

“Exciting.”

They sit in companionable silence for a few moments. 

“Quiet tonight,” Jack remarks. “Or am I mid-crises?”

“The latter. But enough about work, honey.” She quips, gesturing around the waiting area and toward the nurses’ station with her cup. “How was your evening with the Lees?”

Jack winces. “Mom. How do you even know about that?”

“Saw you walking over there when I came back from the store last night. Never mind the phone call. What, do you think your mother is dense?” 

“Ugh. I thought your shift had started by then.”

She grins. “It was a ten o’clock. And I really felt like making lasagna.” 

“Well, if you must know, my evening was fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yes, fine.” 

“Fine!” Dr. Wolff sings out the word, tasting it. “I’m blessed to have a poet for a son. So expressive. Such a gift with words.” 

“A poet who is also a teenager,” Jack corrects.

“Fair enough. So did you watch a movie?”

“Ugh, mom. Yes, we watched the movie. You know, the three of us,” he reminds her.

“And did you talk?”

“A little, yeah, I guess.” Jack drains his coffee, fiddles with the cup. “Not that much.”

“A little, not much.” She whistles, but then breaks off and gives him a searching look. Jack can feel his face heating. He spins the cup on the arm of the chair. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she says, finally. “I shouldn’t be teasing you, not this week. I’m just—I’m going to miss you, is all. I guess I have a funny way of showing it.”

Jack tries to smile. The conversation feels safer, though he feels more at risk of tearing up all of the sudden. “Going away to college is weird,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been existing in this bizarre liminal space all week. Weird things keep happening. All of this stuff with the Lees…” He runs out of words, shrugs.

He wishes he could talk to her—well, maybe not to her, _his mother_ , but to someone close like her, someone he could trust. If he had a dad, would he tell him about what happened with Nath? Probably not. His hypothetical father would probably only be equipped to talk about girls. 

His mom pats his arm. “You know what my professional recommendation is?”

“Want me to guess?”

She laughs. “Go home and go to sleep. And don’t drink anymore of my coffee.” She screws the lid back on the thermos and picks it up possessively. 

“Great bedside manner, mom.”

Angela, a nurse, is beckoning to Dr. Wolff, charts in hand. She hops up with a sigh and extends a hand to squeeze his fingers and usher him to his feet. “Things might feel brighter in the morning if you actually give yourself the opportunity to be awake for it,” she says, and then she’s clattering away.  
  
  
  
The next day is Monday. Dr. Wolff’s professional advice in mind, Jack drags himself out of bed and into the shower at quarter to twelve. Instead of losing himself to the memory of Nath’s touch, Jack spends half an hour under the water replaying their conversations from Saturday and trying to hold off a panic attack. What happened Saturday? Okay: Jack told Nath he loved him, Nath wanted to kiss, Nath said he wanted to hook up, Nath cried, Nath asked Jack to stay, Nath asked Jack to leave.

Nath hasn’t called or come over. Neither has Jack called nor gone by his house. There’s been no sign of Hannah, his stubborn little buddy. That also stings, actually. Was Jack supposed to call? He can’t sort it; he’s primed for Nath’s rejection, and he feels it, of course. So familiar. But on the other hand, Nath was the one who ventured out on a limb into confusing territory, led by Jack, who has kissed plenty of guys, who was so _sure._ Does that mean he should call?

Nath said, _You’re wrong about this not mattering to me. Can you show me? Can you tell me you love me again?_ And he said, _You should probably go. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m freaking out._

Monday night, he calls the Lee house. Nath isn’t home, Mr. Lee says, takes a message—a little unsure, like he hasn’t been his children’s answering service before. 

Jack stays up until midnight painting his room oatmeal. When he runs out of oatmeal, he paints the last wall a shade called porcelain dove. They look the same. Probably a trick of the lamp light. He thinks about calling Berkeley Chris—cruising Chris?—or even just driving out to Rodeo’s to take his chances. But his heart’s not in it. Besides, it’d be slim pickings—the slimmest if he wants a guy anywhere close to his own age. He’ll have better rebound options at college. 

Nobody calls.

Jack decides to stay up all night so when he wakes up, Tuesday will be over and will have lost its power to hurt him. He’s so sleepy though; he falls asleep on the couch, with Bird stretched out on the floor next to him, just after one in the morning.

 

✭

 

Wrapped in a blanket, arms thrown over his face to block out all the sunlight streaming in through the living room windows, Jack lingers between dreaming and imagining. The couch cushion’s metal zipper pokes the back of his neck, but he feels too heavy, too languid, to move yet. He’s thinking—or maybe dreaming—about water. The lake this time, not the pool. It’s winter, perhaps the day after one of those mythic, perfect skating days up north, when ponds and lakes freeze suddenly, like mirrors, like sheets of glass. He imagines more snow has fallen on the ice, dusting its surface, and he’s walking carefully in his chunky boots, Bird dancing all around him. When he kneels down on the ice and wipes away the snow, he sees perfectly clear aquarium glass, and he stares down through the sedimentary layers of his years here in Middlewood. Lydia isn’t down there. He knows, calmly, there’s nothing that can hurt him down there—there’s only everything that holds him, that buoys him up. And it’s like that day on the dock—Nath eclipsing the sun, offering his hand. Jack holds Nath’s hand, and Hannah holds his other hand, and together, the three of them slip and stumble and skate across the ice.

“Jack,” Nath says.

A weight presses next to him on the couch. “Mmm?” 

“You’re still asleep, aren’t you?” A cool hand brushes his hair, the line of his jaw. Jack pictures the lake, Nath squeezing his hand through wool mittens. It all feels wonderful. 

“Nngh. I’m awake.” He drops his arms from his face, and it’s Nath, real, warm beside him. Nath is leaning over him, dark hair falling into his serious brown eyes, his lips curving into a smile. 

“You’re here.” Jack’s too cozy to feel worried or sad. He just lets himself smile back. “I thought you’d be on the road by now.” 

“My parents did want to get an early start,” Nath admits. “But I told them I had a very important coffee date.”

“Oh?”

“Mmhm. I was promised a superior coffee mug experience.” 

“ _Oh._ ” 

Nath’s fingers drift from Jack’s curls to brush over the delicate skin beneath his eyes where he knows the last of his broken nose bruises bloom. 

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Jack murmurs. Sounds dramatic, but fuck it. Truth. “I’m sorry if the other night I pushed you and things went faster than you were ready for.”

Nath shakes his head. “I wanted everything. I just got scared—and I still am, you know? I keep thinking about what you told me though, and it helps.”

“And you’re here.”

“So we’ve established.”

Jack watches in wonder while Nath kicks off his sneakers and pushes the blanket aside to climb on top of him until they’re nose to nose. 

“I want to see you again,” Nath says against Jack’s mouth. “I want to see you again,” he says, kissing Jack. 

 

Later, they stand at the counter while the coffee machine thrums and beeps. Jack leans against Nath, breathing him in; he imagines he can smell sweat, cedar, chlorine, a hint of lake water. Nath examines the coffee mug collection cluttering the open cupboard with a small frown. Then, grinning, he chooses the astronaut mug. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Historical and Regional Inaccuracies:  
> There are many of both! Sincere apologies from this California-dwelling 90s kid to all the folks out there who love historical accuracy. :3 
> 
> I made a silly simple math error and spent most of my time writing this fic thinking it was set in 1978! It actually should be 1977, since Nath’s in the Harvard Class of 1981. *facepalm* By the time I realized my mistake, I was already too attached to 1978 details like Jack’s The Electric Chairs (later Jayne County and the Electric Chairs) album. 
> 
> The Jonestown Massacre, to which Dr. Wolff alludes, actually took place in November 1978.
> 
> Jack’s summer art camp is inspired by The Putney School Summer Programs. The Putney School has been in operation since the thirties. So far, I have been unable to find the start year for the summer program, but I believe it began much later than 1977.
> 
> The community pool where Jack, Hannah, and Nath swim was inadvertently modeled on California/Western community pools; an outdoor pool like that probably wouldn’t have existed in the Midwest at that time (according to my dad anyway, who grew up in Illinois and has shuddering memories of frigid YMCA basement pools; come at me if I’m wrong about this though! :3). I just really wanted Jack and Hannah to enjoy some summery time in the sun! 
> 
> The book Jack reads by the pool is _The Kraken Wakes_ (also known as _Out of the Deeps_ ) by John Wyndham. Hannah reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s _A Wizard of Earthsea_. The Saturday Night Movie Nath, Hannah, and Jack watch is _Village of the Damned_ (1960), starring George Sanders.  <3
> 
> The story title comes from Jack Gilbert’s poem “Tear It Down.” 
> 
> Many thanks to M and Scott who hooked me up with myriad suggestions for period-appropriate media. <3


End file.
